Black Butterfly | Original Art | Illustration
Medium: Mixed media – Ink, Watercolour, Acrylic
Style: Expressive, abstract, emotionally introspective
Techniques: Free-flowing brushwork, layered washes, bold contrasts
Palette: Earthy neutrals, deep blacks, and muted reds, evoking a sense of movement, transformation, and quiet power
Key Features: A symbolic exploration of truth, perception, and the human condition
Description:
Created during Chapter 2 (2020 - 2023), this piece is part of the Versions of Robert Collection—a deeply personal body of work reflecting my journey through my mother’s stroke, dissociation, and eventual dementia. This period of my life involved immense inner soul work, each piece acting as a page in a diary, accompanied by a poem or story.
“Black Butterfly” represents a messenger, a silent observer of the human experience. It moves through the shadows of thought and perception, questioning the cycles of belief, conflict, detachment, and renewal.
What have we become?
Who are we in this web of opinions?
A cycle of believing, fighting, detaching, and repeating.
The bold black contrasts give weight to its presence, while fluid, layered strokes suggest the butterfly’s quiet movement through time. It doesn’t fight against the world—it simply watches, understands, and reminds us to look deeper.
Details:
- Size: A4 Illustration
- Material: Mixed media on paper
- Unframed
- Original, signed by the artist
- Limited Edition Giclée Prints Available – 150 prints total across three sizes, including the original size
Black Butterfly | Original Art | Illustration
by Robert Paul:
Black Butterfly
..
Black butterfly
dancing in our shadows
..
Why do you come
to our garden
this lion’s den of mankind
Why do you come
to our lullaby of truths & perceptions
..
What have we become
Who are we
All this information of opinions in our hands
..
What is this human condition of
Loving
Fighting
Believing
Detaching
Flowing
Repeating
..
Black butterfly
I stand
facing a shell of ghosts
Looking into our eyes
longing for us to break free
Searching for answers
In this spiderweb
..
Black butterfly
embracing my heart
give me enough courage
to see the signpost
to the birth inside
..
